The Pledge of Allegiance

This time I am in argument with my mother over "under god" being in the pledge and how we are disrespectful to our country for not saying it. I am going insane with people confusing patriotism with or pledge that was altered in 1954 and violates our first amendment. I am very much in agreement with the rest of our allegiance; just not the "god" part. Any other rants out there?

"... one nation, in a dirigible, with licorice and jugs of wine for owls."

Bill Poser wrote at Language Log about the pledge's purpose of indoctrinating loyalty to the state. "In [the March 24, 2004] column in the New York Times, entitled Of God and the Flag, William Safire reports that as a little boy he thought that the Pledge began "I led the pigeons to the flag". In a roundabout way, I think he understood it all too well."

I used two approaches when we in Australia had a national anthem of "god save the Queen".

I refused to sing it at school assembly.

When confronted by the principle, who was a reasonable bloke.

As it was a very long time ago, I stated something like: "Saving the Queen, regardless of who does it, doesn't help our nation out of the problems it faces and I be more of a patriot if I sang god save Australia, but, the only way Australia can be saved is if our leaders stop throwing money away to get votes."

So we should be singing: "The Pub With No Beer" which shows Australia's current state".

To which he, to my surprise, actually laughed and agreed with me.

Australia was in massive debt at the time.

Though in modern times, I point out that all religious nations try to appeal to god, and god helps absolutely none of them, so having god in a national statement, does absolutely nothing for that nation, it only makes them appear naive and stupid in including god.

So, if the US wants to show itself as an intelligent nation, they should leave god out of their pledge of allegiance,

Having god in their pledge of allegiance, only makes US citizens appear very dumb and totally ignorant of reality.

That is how most of us Australians see countries who include god in their pledge of allegiance.

Australians do have "so help me god" in the new citizenship oath/pledge, but it is only something new citizens have to say once in their lives, so it is non-sequitur to most Australians.

If we had to say it regularly, we would complain and have god tossed out of it, many of us want the queen thrown out of the pledge as well.

So the oath was designed by the Commonwealth, not by Australians.

Some day we will become a republic and ditch both Queen and god from our new citizenship pledge.